I've been cooking all morning. First a good sized batch of baked beans. They've got about 5 more hours in the oven. I used Alton Brown's Baked Beans recipe. Note the link is to a fellow blogger, because the Food Network completely fucked up their recipe search engine. You used to be able to specify a show when searching for a recipe. Generally, when I'm looking for a recipe on from Food TV I now what fucking show I saw it on... *sigh* now I have to sift through hundreds of results, and I still don't see the Good Eats version. So about that chili... I really like cooking chili, because I don't need to follow a recipe. I'm like Witch Hazel standing over a boiling cauldron adding a pinch of this, and a smidge of that. Except when it comes to hot chilis... I may have over done it this time. I forgot how much we had at home, and bought too many at the store. They all went in, serranos, cherry hots, anahiems, jalapenos, a can of chipoltes in adobo sauce, banana hots. Added to that is about 2lbs of ground chuck, 1.5lbs of cubed chuck, and 1.5lbs of lamb neck bones (looked like a good source of flavor), 2.5 giant onions, a head of garlic, 2 bottles of beer, a bag of tortilla chips, some beef stock, black strap molasses, worcestershire sauce, bay leaves, cilantro, and more. The end result is a chili that is solid and very intense, like a kick in the head. There's the initial heat up front, a full round beef flavor, some sweetness, and a lingering, building heat. The heat gets you from all angles and is culumlative. Moderate with some sour cream and some good Dry Jack Cheese and fresh scallions. Mmmmm!!! It's ironic that we're going to a place called Chili's to eat tonight. It's for an event, and I didn't get to pick. I think I'll eat before I go. *Update* : I forgot to to mention a ton of tomatoes, some tomato paste, and some tomato sauce. The initial taste test reminded me I forgot the cumin too. I was surprised to find that it wasn't _that_ hot either. It tends to get a bit hotter as it sits, so I probably won't have to add any more heat. Right now it's just a little bit sweet... but I'm working on that. My 12qt stock pot isn't full yet (almost) so I'm still cooking.